Transcript
World Borders, Political BordersWorld Borders, Political Borders Author(s): Etienne Balibar and Erin M. Williams Source: PMLA, Vol. 117, No. 1, Special Topic: Mobile Citizens, Media States (Jan., 2002), pp. 71- 78 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/823250 . Accessed: 03/07/2011 23:01
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
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transnational citizenship meet the politics of inter- national aesthetics in an era of technological liter-
acy, Etienne Balibar's writings assume increasing importance in the analysis of mobile and indiscrete forms of national modernity and culture.
Emily Apter University of California, Los Angeles
transnational citizenship meet the politics of inter- national aesthetics in an era of technological liter-
acy, Etienne Balibar's writings assume increasing importance in the analysis of mobile and indiscrete forms of national modernity and culture.
Emily Apter University of California, Los Angeles
NOTES l See also Balibar, "Les frontieres," and Balibar et al. 2 The quotation in full reads as follows: "But he [Kemal
Ataturk] had to force through everything he did in the struggle against the European democracies on the one hand and the old Mohammedan-Pan-Islamic sultan's economy on the other; and the result is a fanatically anti-traditional nationalism: re-
jection of all existing Mohammedan cultural heritage, the es- tablishment of a fantastic relation to a primal Turkish identity, technological modernization in the European sense, in order to
triumph against a hated and yet admired Europe with its own
weapons: hence, the preference for European-educated emi-
grants as teachers, from whom one can lear without the threat of foreign propaganda. Result: nationalism in the extreme ac-
NOTES l See also Balibar, "Les frontieres," and Balibar et al. 2 The quotation in full reads as follows: "But he [Kemal
Ataturk] had to force through everything he did in the struggle against the European democracies on the one hand and the old Mohammedan-Pan-Islamic sultan's economy on the other; and the result is a fanatically anti-traditional nationalism: re-
jection of all existing Mohammedan cultural heritage, the es- tablishment of a fantastic relation to a primal Turkish identity, technological modernization in the European sense, in order to
triumph against a hated and yet admired Europe with its own
weapons: hence, the preference for European-educated emi-
grants as teachers, from whom one can lear without the threat of foreign propaganda. Result: nationalism in the extreme ac-
companied by the simultaneous destruction of the historical national character. This picture, which in other countries like
Germany, Italy, and even Russia (?) is not visible for everyone to see, shows itself here in full nakedness.... It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the present international situation is nothing but a ruse of providence, designed to lead us along a
bloody and tortuous path to an International of triviality and a culture of Esperanto. I have already suspected this in Germany and Italy in view of the dreadful inauthenticity of the 'blood and soil' propaganda, but only here has the evidence of such a trend almost reached the point of certainty" (82).
companied by the simultaneous destruction of the historical national character. This picture, which in other countries like
Germany, Italy, and even Russia (?) is not visible for everyone to see, shows itself here in full nakedness.... It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the present international situation is nothing but a ruse of providence, designed to lead us along a
bloody and tortuous path to an International of triviality and a culture of Esperanto. I have already suspected this in Germany and Italy in view of the dreadful inauthenticity of the 'blood and soil' propaganda, but only here has the evidence of such a trend almost reached the point of certainty" (82).
.i
_1.
3'
T
WORKS CITED WORKS CITED
Auerbach, Erich. Letter to Walter Benjamin. 3 Jan. 1937. Archiv der Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. "Walter Ben-
jamin and Erich Auerbach: Fragments of a Correspon- dence." Ed. Karlheinz Barck. Trans. Anthony Reynolds. Diacritics 22.3-4 (1992): 81-83.
Balibar, Etienne. Droit de cite: Culture et politique en de- mocratie. Paris: L'aube, 1998.
. "Les frontieres de l'Europe." La crainte des masses: Politique et philosophie avant et apres Marx. Paris: Galilee, 1997.
Balibar, Etienne, et al. Sans-papiers: L'archai'sme fatal. Paris: La D6couverte, 1999.
Auerbach, Erich. Letter to Walter Benjamin. 3 Jan. 1937. Archiv der Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. "Walter Ben-
jamin and Erich Auerbach: Fragments of a Correspon- dence." Ed. Karlheinz Barck. Trans. Anthony Reynolds. Diacritics 22.3-4 (1992): 81-83.
Balibar, Etienne. Droit de cite: Culture et politique en de- mocratie. Paris: L'aube, 1998.
. "Les frontieres de l'Europe." La crainte des masses: Politique et philosophie avant et apres Marx. Paris: Galilee, 1997.
Balibar, Etienne, et al. Sans-papiers: L'archai'sme fatal. Paris: La D6couverte, 1999.
World Borders, Political Borders World Borders, Political Borders
I AM SPEAKING OF THE "BORDERS OF EU-
rope" in Greece, one of the "peripheral" coun- tries of Europe in its traditional configuration-a configuration that reflects powerful myths and a
long-lived series of historical events. Thessa- loniki is itself at the edge of this border country, one of those places where the dialectic between confrontation with the foreigner (transformed into a hereditary enemy) and communication be- tween civilizations (without which humanity cannot progress) is periodically played out. I thus find myself, it seems, right in the middle of my object of study, with all the resultant difficulties.
The term border is extremely rich in signifi- cations. One of my hypotheses will be that it is
I AM SPEAKING OF THE "BORDERS OF EU-
rope" in Greece, one of the "peripheral" coun- tries of Europe in its traditional configuration-a configuration that reflects powerful myths and a
long-lived series of historical events. Thessa- loniki is itself at the edge of this border country, one of those places where the dialectic between confrontation with the foreigner (transformed into a hereditary enemy) and communication be- tween civilizations (without which humanity cannot progress) is periodically played out. I thus find myself, it seems, right in the middle of my object of study, with all the resultant difficulties.
The term border is extremely rich in signifi- cations. One of my hypotheses will be that it is
profoundly changing in meaning. The borders of new politico-economic entities, in which an at-
tempt is being made to preserve the functions of the sovereignty of the state, are no longer at all situated at the outer limit of territories: they are
dispersed a little everywhere, wherever the move- ment of information, people, and things is hap- pening and is controlled-for example, in
cosmopolitan cities. But it is also one of my the- ses that the zones called peripheral, where secu- lar and religious cultures confront each other, where differences in economic prosperity be- come more pronounced and more strained, con- stitute the melting pot for the formation of a
profoundly changing in meaning. The borders of new politico-economic entities, in which an at-
tempt is being made to preserve the functions of the sovereignty of the state, are no longer at all situated at the outer limit of territories: they are
dispersed a little everywhere, wherever the move- ment of information, people, and things is hap- pening and is controlled-for example, in
cosmopolitan cities. But it is also one of my the- ses that the zones called peripheral, where secu- lar and religious cultures confront each other, where differences in economic prosperity be- come more pronounced and more strained, con- stitute the melting pot for the formation of a
I 1 7.1 I 1 7.1
72 World Borders, Political Borders
people (dgmos), without which there is no citizen-
ship (politeia) in the sense that this term has ac-
quired since antiquity in the democratic tradition. In this sense, border areas-zones, coun-
tries, and cities-are not marginal to the consti- tution of a public sphere but rather are at the center. If Europe is for us first of all the name of an unresolved political problem, Greece is one of its centers, not because of the mythical origins of our civilization, symbolized by the
Acropolis of Athens, but because of the current
problems concentrated there.
Or, more exactly, the notion of a center con- fronts us with a choice. In connection with states, it means the concentration of power, the localiza- tion of virtual or real governing authorities. In this
sense, the center of Europe is in Brussels, Stras-
bourg, or the City in London and the Frankfurt stock exchange or soon will be in Berlin, the capi- tal of the most powerful of the states that dominate the construction of Europe, and secondarily in
Paris, London, and so on. But this notion has an-
other, more essential and more elusive meaning, which points to the sites where a people is consti- tuted through the creation of civic consciousness and the collective resolution of the contradictions that run through it. Is there then a "European peo- ple," even an emergent one? Nothing is less cer- tain. And if there is not a European people, a new
type of people yet to be defined, then there is no
public sphere or European state beyond techno- cratic appearances. This is what I meant several
years ago when I imitated one of Hegel's famous
phrases: Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa. But the
question must remain open, and in a particularly "central" way at the border points.
There are more difficult issues. We are meet-
ing in the aftermath of the war in Kosovo, the
Balkans, or Yugoslavia, at a moment when the
protectorate established at Pristina by the Western
powers is being put into place with difficulty and for dubious ends, while in Belgrade uncertain ma- neuvers are unfolding for or against the future of the current regime. It is not certain that we all have the same judgment about these events, which we
will not emerge from for quite some time. It is even probable that we have profoundly divergent opinions on the subject. The fact that we do not use the same names for the war thatjust took place is an unequivocal sign of this. It is possible-it is
probable-that some of you condemned the inter- vention of NATO for various reasons, that others
supported it for various reasons, and that still oth-
ers, also for various reasons, found it impossible to take sides. It is possible-it is probable-that certain of us saw striking proof of the subordina- tion of Europe to the exterior, hegemonic power of the United States of America, while others saw a mercenary instrumentalization of American
power by the European states in the service of Continental objectives. And so on.
I do not presume to resolve these dilemmas. But I want to state here my conviction that these events mercilessly reveal the fundamental con- tradictions plaguing European unification. It is not by chance that they occurred when Europe was set to cross an irreversible threshold, by in-
stituting a unitary currency and thus the commu- nal control of economic and social policy and by implementing formal elements of "European cit-
izenship," whose military and police counter-
parts are quickly perceived. In reality, what is at stake here is the defini-
tion of the modes of inclusion and exclusion in the European sphere, as a "public sphere" of bu-
reaucracy and of relations of force but also of communication and cooperation between peo- ples. Consequently, in the strongest sense of the
term, it is the possibility or the impossibility of European unification. In the establishment of a protectorate in Kosovo and, indirectly, other
regions of the Balkans, as in the blockade of Slo- bodan Milosevic's Serbia, the elements of impos- sibility prevailed obviously and lastingly-even if one thinks, as in my case, that an intervention one way or another to block the ongoing "ethnic
cleansing" could no longer be avoided and even if one is skeptical, as in my case, of self-righteous positions concerning a people's right to self- determination in the history of political institu-
c
tn4
L
.d
E
Etienne Balibar 73
tions. The unacceptable impasse that we had reached on the eve of the war in the whole of ex-
Yugoslavia was fundamentally the result of the
powerlessness, inability, and refusal of the "Eu-
ropean community" to propose political solu- tions of association, to open possibilities of
development for the peoples of the Balkans (and more generally of the East), and to assume
everywhere its responsibilities in an effective
struggle against human rights violations. It is thus Europe, particularly the primary European powers, that is responsible for the catastrophic developments that subsequently took place and for the consequences that they may now have.
But, on the other hand, if it is true that the Balkan war manifests the impasse and the im-
possibility of European unification, it is neces-
sary to have the courage (or the madness) to ask in today's conditions: under what conditions might it become possible again? where are the potentialities for a different future? and how can they be released by assigning responsibility for the past but avoiding the fruitless exercise of re-
peating it? An effort of this kind alone can give meaning to a project of active European citizen-
ship, disengaged from all myths of identity, from all illusions about the necessary course of his- tory, and a fortiori from all belief in the infal-
libility of governments. It is this effort that I would like to call on and contribute to. We must privilege the issue of the border when discussing the questions of the European people and of the state in Europe because it crystallizes the stakes of politico-economic power and the symbolic stakes at work in the collective imagination: re- lations of force and material interest on one side, representations of identity on the other.
I see a striking indicator of this in the fact that during the new Balkan War that has just taken place the name of Europe functioned in two con- tradictory ways, which cruelly highlighted the ambiguity of the notions of interior and exterior. On one hand, Yugoslavia (as well as to varying degrees the whole Balkan area, including Alba- nia, Macedonia, Bulgaria...) was considered an
exterior space, in which, in the name of a "princi- ple of intervention" that I will not discuss here but that clearly marked a reciprocal exteriority, an entity called Europe felt compelled to inter- vene to block a crime against humanity, with the aid of its powerful American allies if necessary. In this sense, the Balkans were outside of Europe. On the other hand, to take up themes proposed by the Albanian national writer Ismail Kadare, for
example, it was explained that this intervention was occurring on Europe's soil, within its histori- cal limits, and in defense of the principles of Western civilization. Thus, this time the Balkans found themselves fully inscribed within the bor- ders of Europe. The idea was that Europe could not accept genocidal population deportation on its own soil, not only for moral reasons but above all to preserve its political future.
However, this theme, which I do not by any means consider pure propaganda, did not corre-
spond to any attempt to anticipate or to accelerate the integration of the Balkan regions referred to in this way into the European public sphere. The failure of the stillborn "Balkan conference" testi- fies eloquently to this. There was no economic plan of reparations and development involving all the countries concerned and the European com-
munity as such. Nor was the notion of "European citizenship" adapted-for example, by the issu- ing of "European identity cards" to the Kosovo refugees whose identification papers had been destroyed by the Serbian army and militias, along the lines of the excellent suggestion by the French writer Jean Chesneaux. Nor were the steps and criteria for entrance into the "union" redefined.
Thus, on one hand, the Balkans are a part of Europe, and on the other, they are not. Appar- ently, we are not ready to leave this contradiction behind, for it has equivalents in the eastern part of the continent, beginning with Turkey, Russia, and the Caucasus regions, and everywhere takes on a more and more dramatic significance. This fact results in profoundly paradoxical situations. First of all, the colonization of Kosovo (if one wants to designate the current regime this way, as Regis
"I. M.
74 World Borders, Political Borders
Debray, with whom I otherwise totally disagree, suggested by his comparisons with the Algerian War) is an "interior colonization" of Europe by Europe (with the help of a sort of American for-
eign legion). But I am also thinking of other situa- tions, such as the fact that Greece could wonder once again if it was interior or exterior to the do- main of European sovereignty, since its soil served as an entry port for land-occupation forces that it did not want to take part in. I can even imag- ine that when Turkish participation in the opera- tions was discussed, certain Greek "patriots" asked themselves which of the two "hereditary enemies" was more interior to political Europe, on its way to becoming a military Europe.
All this proves that the notions of interiority and exteriority, which form the basis of the repre- sentation of the border, are undergoing a verita- ble earthquake. The representations of the border, territory, and sovereignty, and the very possibility of representing the border and territory, have been the object of an irreversible historical "forc-
ing." At present these representations constitute a certain conception of the political sphere as a
sphere of sovereignty, both the imposition of law and the distribution of land, dating from the
beginning of the European modem age and later
exported to the whole world: what Carl Schmitt in his great book from 1950, Der Nomos der
Erde, called the Jus Publicum Europaeum. But as we also know, this representation of
the border, essential as it is for state institutions, is nevertheless profoundly inadequate to an ac- count of the complexity of real situations, of the
topology underlying the sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent mutual relations between the identities constitutive of European history. I sug- gested in the past that (particularly in Mitteleu-
ropa but more generally in all Europe), without even considering the question of "minorities," we are dealing with "triple points" or mobile "over-
lapping zones" of contradictory civilizations rather than with juxtapositions of monolithic en- tities. In all its points, Europe is multiple; it is
always home to tensions between numerous reli-
gious, cultural, linguistic, and political affilia- tions, numerous readings of history, numerous modes of relations with the rest of the world, whether it is Americanism or orientalism, the
possessive individualism of…
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.
http://www.jstor.org
transnational citizenship meet the politics of inter- national aesthetics in an era of technological liter-
acy, Etienne Balibar's writings assume increasing importance in the analysis of mobile and indiscrete forms of national modernity and culture.
Emily Apter University of California, Los Angeles
transnational citizenship meet the politics of inter- national aesthetics in an era of technological liter-
acy, Etienne Balibar's writings assume increasing importance in the analysis of mobile and indiscrete forms of national modernity and culture.
Emily Apter University of California, Los Angeles
NOTES l See also Balibar, "Les frontieres," and Balibar et al. 2 The quotation in full reads as follows: "But he [Kemal
Ataturk] had to force through everything he did in the struggle against the European democracies on the one hand and the old Mohammedan-Pan-Islamic sultan's economy on the other; and the result is a fanatically anti-traditional nationalism: re-
jection of all existing Mohammedan cultural heritage, the es- tablishment of a fantastic relation to a primal Turkish identity, technological modernization in the European sense, in order to
triumph against a hated and yet admired Europe with its own
weapons: hence, the preference for European-educated emi-
grants as teachers, from whom one can lear without the threat of foreign propaganda. Result: nationalism in the extreme ac-
NOTES l See also Balibar, "Les frontieres," and Balibar et al. 2 The quotation in full reads as follows: "But he [Kemal
Ataturk] had to force through everything he did in the struggle against the European democracies on the one hand and the old Mohammedan-Pan-Islamic sultan's economy on the other; and the result is a fanatically anti-traditional nationalism: re-
jection of all existing Mohammedan cultural heritage, the es- tablishment of a fantastic relation to a primal Turkish identity, technological modernization in the European sense, in order to
triumph against a hated and yet admired Europe with its own
weapons: hence, the preference for European-educated emi-
grants as teachers, from whom one can lear without the threat of foreign propaganda. Result: nationalism in the extreme ac-
companied by the simultaneous destruction of the historical national character. This picture, which in other countries like
Germany, Italy, and even Russia (?) is not visible for everyone to see, shows itself here in full nakedness.... It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the present international situation is nothing but a ruse of providence, designed to lead us along a
bloody and tortuous path to an International of triviality and a culture of Esperanto. I have already suspected this in Germany and Italy in view of the dreadful inauthenticity of the 'blood and soil' propaganda, but only here has the evidence of such a trend almost reached the point of certainty" (82).
companied by the simultaneous destruction of the historical national character. This picture, which in other countries like
Germany, Italy, and even Russia (?) is not visible for everyone to see, shows itself here in full nakedness.... It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the present international situation is nothing but a ruse of providence, designed to lead us along a
bloody and tortuous path to an International of triviality and a culture of Esperanto. I have already suspected this in Germany and Italy in view of the dreadful inauthenticity of the 'blood and soil' propaganda, but only here has the evidence of such a trend almost reached the point of certainty" (82).
.i
_1.
3'
T
WORKS CITED WORKS CITED
Auerbach, Erich. Letter to Walter Benjamin. 3 Jan. 1937. Archiv der Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. "Walter Ben-
jamin and Erich Auerbach: Fragments of a Correspon- dence." Ed. Karlheinz Barck. Trans. Anthony Reynolds. Diacritics 22.3-4 (1992): 81-83.
Balibar, Etienne. Droit de cite: Culture et politique en de- mocratie. Paris: L'aube, 1998.
. "Les frontieres de l'Europe." La crainte des masses: Politique et philosophie avant et apres Marx. Paris: Galilee, 1997.
Balibar, Etienne, et al. Sans-papiers: L'archai'sme fatal. Paris: La D6couverte, 1999.
Auerbach, Erich. Letter to Walter Benjamin. 3 Jan. 1937. Archiv der Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. "Walter Ben-
jamin and Erich Auerbach: Fragments of a Correspon- dence." Ed. Karlheinz Barck. Trans. Anthony Reynolds. Diacritics 22.3-4 (1992): 81-83.
Balibar, Etienne. Droit de cite: Culture et politique en de- mocratie. Paris: L'aube, 1998.
. "Les frontieres de l'Europe." La crainte des masses: Politique et philosophie avant et apres Marx. Paris: Galilee, 1997.
Balibar, Etienne, et al. Sans-papiers: L'archai'sme fatal. Paris: La D6couverte, 1999.
World Borders, Political Borders World Borders, Political Borders
I AM SPEAKING OF THE "BORDERS OF EU-
rope" in Greece, one of the "peripheral" coun- tries of Europe in its traditional configuration-a configuration that reflects powerful myths and a
long-lived series of historical events. Thessa- loniki is itself at the edge of this border country, one of those places where the dialectic between confrontation with the foreigner (transformed into a hereditary enemy) and communication be- tween civilizations (without which humanity cannot progress) is periodically played out. I thus find myself, it seems, right in the middle of my object of study, with all the resultant difficulties.
The term border is extremely rich in signifi- cations. One of my hypotheses will be that it is
I AM SPEAKING OF THE "BORDERS OF EU-
rope" in Greece, one of the "peripheral" coun- tries of Europe in its traditional configuration-a configuration that reflects powerful myths and a
long-lived series of historical events. Thessa- loniki is itself at the edge of this border country, one of those places where the dialectic between confrontation with the foreigner (transformed into a hereditary enemy) and communication be- tween civilizations (without which humanity cannot progress) is periodically played out. I thus find myself, it seems, right in the middle of my object of study, with all the resultant difficulties.
The term border is extremely rich in signifi- cations. One of my hypotheses will be that it is
profoundly changing in meaning. The borders of new politico-economic entities, in which an at-
tempt is being made to preserve the functions of the sovereignty of the state, are no longer at all situated at the outer limit of territories: they are
dispersed a little everywhere, wherever the move- ment of information, people, and things is hap- pening and is controlled-for example, in
cosmopolitan cities. But it is also one of my the- ses that the zones called peripheral, where secu- lar and religious cultures confront each other, where differences in economic prosperity be- come more pronounced and more strained, con- stitute the melting pot for the formation of a
profoundly changing in meaning. The borders of new politico-economic entities, in which an at-
tempt is being made to preserve the functions of the sovereignty of the state, are no longer at all situated at the outer limit of territories: they are
dispersed a little everywhere, wherever the move- ment of information, people, and things is hap- pening and is controlled-for example, in
cosmopolitan cities. But it is also one of my the- ses that the zones called peripheral, where secu- lar and religious cultures confront each other, where differences in economic prosperity be- come more pronounced and more strained, con- stitute the melting pot for the formation of a
I 1 7.1 I 1 7.1
72 World Borders, Political Borders
people (dgmos), without which there is no citizen-
ship (politeia) in the sense that this term has ac-
quired since antiquity in the democratic tradition. In this sense, border areas-zones, coun-
tries, and cities-are not marginal to the consti- tution of a public sphere but rather are at the center. If Europe is for us first of all the name of an unresolved political problem, Greece is one of its centers, not because of the mythical origins of our civilization, symbolized by the
Acropolis of Athens, but because of the current
problems concentrated there.
Or, more exactly, the notion of a center con- fronts us with a choice. In connection with states, it means the concentration of power, the localiza- tion of virtual or real governing authorities. In this
sense, the center of Europe is in Brussels, Stras-
bourg, or the City in London and the Frankfurt stock exchange or soon will be in Berlin, the capi- tal of the most powerful of the states that dominate the construction of Europe, and secondarily in
Paris, London, and so on. But this notion has an-
other, more essential and more elusive meaning, which points to the sites where a people is consti- tuted through the creation of civic consciousness and the collective resolution of the contradictions that run through it. Is there then a "European peo- ple," even an emergent one? Nothing is less cer- tain. And if there is not a European people, a new
type of people yet to be defined, then there is no
public sphere or European state beyond techno- cratic appearances. This is what I meant several
years ago when I imitated one of Hegel's famous
phrases: Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa. But the
question must remain open, and in a particularly "central" way at the border points.
There are more difficult issues. We are meet-
ing in the aftermath of the war in Kosovo, the
Balkans, or Yugoslavia, at a moment when the
protectorate established at Pristina by the Western
powers is being put into place with difficulty and for dubious ends, while in Belgrade uncertain ma- neuvers are unfolding for or against the future of the current regime. It is not certain that we all have the same judgment about these events, which we
will not emerge from for quite some time. It is even probable that we have profoundly divergent opinions on the subject. The fact that we do not use the same names for the war thatjust took place is an unequivocal sign of this. It is possible-it is
probable-that some of you condemned the inter- vention of NATO for various reasons, that others
supported it for various reasons, and that still oth-
ers, also for various reasons, found it impossible to take sides. It is possible-it is probable-that certain of us saw striking proof of the subordina- tion of Europe to the exterior, hegemonic power of the United States of America, while others saw a mercenary instrumentalization of American
power by the European states in the service of Continental objectives. And so on.
I do not presume to resolve these dilemmas. But I want to state here my conviction that these events mercilessly reveal the fundamental con- tradictions plaguing European unification. It is not by chance that they occurred when Europe was set to cross an irreversible threshold, by in-
stituting a unitary currency and thus the commu- nal control of economic and social policy and by implementing formal elements of "European cit-
izenship," whose military and police counter-
parts are quickly perceived. In reality, what is at stake here is the defini-
tion of the modes of inclusion and exclusion in the European sphere, as a "public sphere" of bu-
reaucracy and of relations of force but also of communication and cooperation between peo- ples. Consequently, in the strongest sense of the
term, it is the possibility or the impossibility of European unification. In the establishment of a protectorate in Kosovo and, indirectly, other
regions of the Balkans, as in the blockade of Slo- bodan Milosevic's Serbia, the elements of impos- sibility prevailed obviously and lastingly-even if one thinks, as in my case, that an intervention one way or another to block the ongoing "ethnic
cleansing" could no longer be avoided and even if one is skeptical, as in my case, of self-righteous positions concerning a people's right to self- determination in the history of political institu-
c
tn4
L
.d
E
Etienne Balibar 73
tions. The unacceptable impasse that we had reached on the eve of the war in the whole of ex-
Yugoslavia was fundamentally the result of the
powerlessness, inability, and refusal of the "Eu-
ropean community" to propose political solu- tions of association, to open possibilities of
development for the peoples of the Balkans (and more generally of the East), and to assume
everywhere its responsibilities in an effective
struggle against human rights violations. It is thus Europe, particularly the primary European powers, that is responsible for the catastrophic developments that subsequently took place and for the consequences that they may now have.
But, on the other hand, if it is true that the Balkan war manifests the impasse and the im-
possibility of European unification, it is neces-
sary to have the courage (or the madness) to ask in today's conditions: under what conditions might it become possible again? where are the potentialities for a different future? and how can they be released by assigning responsibility for the past but avoiding the fruitless exercise of re-
peating it? An effort of this kind alone can give meaning to a project of active European citizen-
ship, disengaged from all myths of identity, from all illusions about the necessary course of his- tory, and a fortiori from all belief in the infal-
libility of governments. It is this effort that I would like to call on and contribute to. We must privilege the issue of the border when discussing the questions of the European people and of the state in Europe because it crystallizes the stakes of politico-economic power and the symbolic stakes at work in the collective imagination: re- lations of force and material interest on one side, representations of identity on the other.
I see a striking indicator of this in the fact that during the new Balkan War that has just taken place the name of Europe functioned in two con- tradictory ways, which cruelly highlighted the ambiguity of the notions of interior and exterior. On one hand, Yugoslavia (as well as to varying degrees the whole Balkan area, including Alba- nia, Macedonia, Bulgaria...) was considered an
exterior space, in which, in the name of a "princi- ple of intervention" that I will not discuss here but that clearly marked a reciprocal exteriority, an entity called Europe felt compelled to inter- vene to block a crime against humanity, with the aid of its powerful American allies if necessary. In this sense, the Balkans were outside of Europe. On the other hand, to take up themes proposed by the Albanian national writer Ismail Kadare, for
example, it was explained that this intervention was occurring on Europe's soil, within its histori- cal limits, and in defense of the principles of Western civilization. Thus, this time the Balkans found themselves fully inscribed within the bor- ders of Europe. The idea was that Europe could not accept genocidal population deportation on its own soil, not only for moral reasons but above all to preserve its political future.
However, this theme, which I do not by any means consider pure propaganda, did not corre-
spond to any attempt to anticipate or to accelerate the integration of the Balkan regions referred to in this way into the European public sphere. The failure of the stillborn "Balkan conference" testi- fies eloquently to this. There was no economic plan of reparations and development involving all the countries concerned and the European com-
munity as such. Nor was the notion of "European citizenship" adapted-for example, by the issu- ing of "European identity cards" to the Kosovo refugees whose identification papers had been destroyed by the Serbian army and militias, along the lines of the excellent suggestion by the French writer Jean Chesneaux. Nor were the steps and criteria for entrance into the "union" redefined.
Thus, on one hand, the Balkans are a part of Europe, and on the other, they are not. Appar- ently, we are not ready to leave this contradiction behind, for it has equivalents in the eastern part of the continent, beginning with Turkey, Russia, and the Caucasus regions, and everywhere takes on a more and more dramatic significance. This fact results in profoundly paradoxical situations. First of all, the colonization of Kosovo (if one wants to designate the current regime this way, as Regis
"I. M.
74 World Borders, Political Borders
Debray, with whom I otherwise totally disagree, suggested by his comparisons with the Algerian War) is an "interior colonization" of Europe by Europe (with the help of a sort of American for-
eign legion). But I am also thinking of other situa- tions, such as the fact that Greece could wonder once again if it was interior or exterior to the do- main of European sovereignty, since its soil served as an entry port for land-occupation forces that it did not want to take part in. I can even imag- ine that when Turkish participation in the opera- tions was discussed, certain Greek "patriots" asked themselves which of the two "hereditary enemies" was more interior to political Europe, on its way to becoming a military Europe.
All this proves that the notions of interiority and exteriority, which form the basis of the repre- sentation of the border, are undergoing a verita- ble earthquake. The representations of the border, territory, and sovereignty, and the very possibility of representing the border and territory, have been the object of an irreversible historical "forc-
ing." At present these representations constitute a certain conception of the political sphere as a
sphere of sovereignty, both the imposition of law and the distribution of land, dating from the
beginning of the European modem age and later
exported to the whole world: what Carl Schmitt in his great book from 1950, Der Nomos der
Erde, called the Jus Publicum Europaeum. But as we also know, this representation of
the border, essential as it is for state institutions, is nevertheless profoundly inadequate to an ac- count of the complexity of real situations, of the
topology underlying the sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent mutual relations between the identities constitutive of European history. I sug- gested in the past that (particularly in Mitteleu-
ropa but more generally in all Europe), without even considering the question of "minorities," we are dealing with "triple points" or mobile "over-
lapping zones" of contradictory civilizations rather than with juxtapositions of monolithic en- tities. In all its points, Europe is multiple; it is
always home to tensions between numerous reli-
gious, cultural, linguistic, and political affilia- tions, numerous readings of history, numerous modes of relations with the rest of the world, whether it is Americanism or orientalism, the
possessive individualism of…
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